Poetry Friday: The Flower Press by Chelsea Woodard

It was the sort of thing given to little girls:sturdy and small, round edged, wooden and light.I stalked the pasture's rough and waist-high grassfor worthy specimens: the belle amid the mass,the star shaming the clouds of slighter,ordinary blooms. The asters curled

inside my sweat-damp palms, as if in sleep. Crushedin the parlor's stifling heat, I priedeach shrinking petal back, and turned the screws.But flowers bear no ugly bruise,and even now fall from the brittle page, driedprettily, plucked from memory's hush.